The Seven Madmen (17 page)

"The thing is to be self-supporting."

"Forget it—the brothels will fund us—but are you going to see Barsut? Know what you're going to say?"

"Right
...
"

Erdosain headed for the coach house, where the stalls were. It was a big thick-walled structure with an upper story full of empty rooms with rats running about. In one of these, the sinister Bromberg, whom Erdosain had seen the day of the kidnapping, lived, or rather, slept.

He grasped he was going deliberately under, not knowing what battered version of himself might re-emerge, and, grasping this as well as lacking the slightest enthusiasm for the Astrologer's plans, he felt he was staging an act, setting up an absurd situation just gratuitously. "I was all bankrupt inside," he was later to say; but fighting off his weariness and indifference, he walked out to the coach house. His heart beat hard at the thought of the "showdown" to come. He scowled fitfully and looked like an angry man.

He undid the padlock and chain, and, eager all of a sudden, he pushed back the door.

The prisoner was getting ready to eat, his bare arms showing in a circle of yellow light the kerosene lamp cast on the pine table.

Barsut sat under a metal feed chute, in a wooden horse stall, and when he saw the scowling Erdosain, he froze just a moment in the midst of sprinkling oil on his meat and potatoes; then he put his entire effort into the task at hand. Reaching out and grabbing a pinch of salt, he sprinkled his potatoes. He kept his dignity even though his black armpit was showing through a hole in his pink shirt.

Barsut kept his eyes on his meat to show he cared more about food than he did about Erdosain, who was just three steps off. The rest of the stable was sunk in darkness. The cracks in the walls let in slanting darts of light that made porous golden circles in the dust.

Barsut still wouldn't look up. He braced the bread against the table, vigorously cut himself a slice, poured some soda, fizzing some onto the floor first to clean the bottlemouth, and then bent over to read some old book beside his plate while chewing a mash of meat, bread, and potatoes.

Erdosain leaned on a pillar that held up the roof, feeling queasy from the dry-grass smell, and through half-closed lids could make out Barsut, whose face was half lit by the green light filtering in, while his jaws chomped away in the harsh light the lamp cast onto them. Just then he turned and caught sight of a whip hanging from the wall.

Erdosain reacted visibly to that whip. It had a long handle and short lash, and when Barsut checked to see what had caught Erdosain's eye, he silently sneered at it. Erdosain looked at the man, then the whip, and smiled again. He went to the corner and unhooked the whip. Now Barsut had got up and with his eyes turned full blaze on Erdosain, charged out of the stall. The veins in his neck were terrifically swollen. He would have said something, but pride made him hold it in. The whip cracked drily. Erdosain had whapped it against the wood of the stable to test its flexibility, then he shrugged and the sunbeam slanting through the darkness was streaked with black and the whip fell into the grass.

Erdosain paced around the stables in silence. He thought of that life, now in his hands, nobody could take that away from him, but the thought gave him no pleasure. Barsut was looking over the stall divider at the sunny countryside, through a gap in the door.

Things were no longer the same. And that was all there was to it. He looked angrily at Barsut: "Are you going to sign the check or not?" Barsut shrugged and Erdosain didn't ask again. Perhaps some day at that very hour he would sit in some dark cell and see again in memory a tennis court laid out in brick-red dust, beside a river, the rackets' woven mesh across the sky, girls at play. Unable to hold it in, he burst out, not so much to Barsut as to himself:

"Remember? For you, I had a loser's face. Shut up. You couldn't know how much I suffered. Not you, not her, either. Shut up. You think I want your lousy money? No way. It's just that I'm so miserable. You and her, you've dragged me down to this. What's the point in even talking. I only know I'm tired. But why bother talking." And he was all set to leave when the Astrologer came in. Barsut checked to see what was in his hands and the Astrologer, settling his hat, took the lamp, blew it out, and, sitting on a box, began:

"I came to see you to arrange this business of the check. You know that's why we kidnapped you. Of course, I wouldn't come to you like this, except in the notebook we found in your pocket and Erdosain tried to burn,
{7}
I read a truly stunning thought: 'Money makes a god of man. Thus Ford must be a god. If he's a god, he's able to destroy the moon.' "

None of this was true, but Barsut had no reaction.

Erdosain watched the impenetrable rhombus-shaped face of the Astrologer. The whole thing was clearly just a put-on that Barsut hadn't fallen for, sure the man was out to hoodwink him.

The Astrologer's Speech

The Astrologer went on:

"At first, I dismissed this thought as just one more of your crackpot ravings. But then, I had to stop and ask myself why money makes man a god. And suddenly I realized you had hit on an essential truth. And you know how I figured you were right? Because I could see how Henry Ford with his millions could buy enough explosives to blow a planet like the moon to bits. So, your assertion was valid."

"Of course it was," said Barsut snootily, but inwardly flattered.

"Then I realized that of all of our ancients, of all our authors down the ages, nobody but you, who had written that truth without knowing its uses, nobody else grasped that men like Ford, Rockefeller, or Morgan could destroy the moon
...
they had so much power
...
power that, as I said, in myths they could only attribute to some god the creator. And your discovery has a great implication: the beginning of the rule of the superman."

Barsut turned his head to look at the Astrologer more closely. Erdosain realized the man was speaking in earnest.

"So see now, when I concluded that Morgan, Rockefeller, and Ford were some kind of gods because of the power they got from money, I realized social revolution was impossible on earth because a Rockefeller or Morgan could wipe out with one flick of the hand a whole race, like you'd wipe out an anthill in your yard."

"If, that is, you had the guts to."

"Guts? I had to wonder if a god has any choice but to use his powers
...
. I wondered if a copper king or oil baron could stand by and let them take his fleets, his mountains, gold, wells, and I saw that to give up that fabulous world he'd have to be as otherworldly as Christ or Buddha
...
and that the gods who wield all this massive power will never let go of it. So it follows that something really enormous would be needed."

"I don't see that at all. When I wrote that, I was thinking something totally different."

"So who cares! This is the great thing: Humanity, the multitudes roaming the great vast spaces, have lost all religion. I don't mean official Catholicism. I mean any theological creed. So then men will wonder: 'What good is our life to us?' No one can want to keep on with a robotlike existence after science has ruined all faith. And just when that starts to dawn on people, a terrible plague will be visited on earth
...
the new plague of mass suicide
...
. Can you picture a world full of furious people with dried-up minds, milling about in the subways of the giant cities, howling at the concrete walls: 'What have they done with our god?' And little girls and schoolgirls joining secret clubs set up for the new sport of suicide? And men refusing to have any more children even after a distinguished population expert says we'll feed them all with synthetic pills?"

"Now that's getting a bit carried away," said Erdosain.

The Astrologer turned around, startled. He had forgotten all about Erdosain.

"Well, sure it's not going to happen unless mankind figures out just why he's so wretched. That's what's always gone wrong with economically based revolutionary movements. Judaism let itself get stuck on Credit and Debit as if that were the whole world and said: 'Happiness is bankrupt because man has no money to buy the essentials
...
' when what they should have been saying was 'Happiness is bankrupt because mankind has no gods or faith.' "

"Now you're contradicting yourself! Before you said—" Erdosain objected.

"Shut up, what do you know?
...
And when I thought hard I came to the conclusion that this was man's terrible metaphysical sickness. The only way to shore up man's happiness is with metaphysical lies
...
. Take away those lies and he reverts to a lot of economic illusions
...
, then I remembered the only ones who could give man back his lost paradise were the flesh and blood gods: Morgan, Rockefeller, Ford—and I conceived a scheme some mediocre mind would think was just crazy—I saw the dead end where society ends up has just one way out
...
and that's to go backward."

Barsut, crossing his arms, had sat down on the edge of the table.

He kept his greenish eyes on the Astrologer, who, with his smock buttoned up to his chin and his hair all messed up, after taking off his hat, was pacing the length of the stable shoving aside with the point of one shoe the odd clumps of dry grass littering the floor. Erdosain, leaning back against a post, watched as Barsut's face took on an ever more wary and mocking look, almost nasty, as if the Astrologer's speech was something to sneer at. The speaker, as if listening to his own talk, would walk along a bit, stop short, and sometimes muss his hair. He said:

"Yes, there will come a day when mankind, grown skeptical and crazed with pleasure-seeking, cursing the gods in impotent frustration, will run amok and have to be shot like a rabid dog—"

"What are you saying?
...
"

"The human tree will be pruned
...
and only the millionaires, with science at their beck and call, can be the ones to prune it. The gods, sick of reality, no longer hoping science may bring happiness, will arm themselves with tiger slaves, unleash great wild disasters, set plagues upon the land
...
. For decades, the great task of the supermen and their slaves will be to destroy man in every way possible, till the world is bled all but dry
...
and only a handful of survivors will live on, alone on an island, the kernel to grow a whole new society."

Barsut had got up. With a nasty scowl and his fists thrust into his pockets he shrugged and asked:

"But do you take this crap you're talking seriously?"

"No, it's not just crap, because it's exactly what I would say to myself."

And he went on:

"A few losers believe what I say
...
that's enough
...
. But here's my idea: the new society will have two castes, with a gulf between them—that is, an intellectual difference of thirty centuries. The majority will be kept plunged in the darkest ignorance, in a world of trumped-up miracles, which are always more interesting than real miracles, and the minority will be the sole possessors of all knowledge and power. That way the happiness of the many is guaranteed, since the members of that caste will feel like part of a divine world, which today they don't believe in. The few will dole out pleasures and miracles for the masses, and the Golden Age, the days when angels wandered down the twilight paths and gods appeared in moonbeams, will exist on earth."

"But that's atrocious. That could never happen."

"How come? I know it could never happen, but we have to keep on as if it were workable."

"But with everything controlled by so few
...
all knowledge—"

"Ho, now it's knowledge! What good is scientific knowledge? Tell me that. You yourself make fun of researchers and call them 'masters of the totally useless fact.' "

"I see you've read my trash."

"Of course. You have to have something concrete to shove in people's faces. And the elite setup you're talking about in my scheme exists here and now in our society, only it's all backward. Our knowledge, by which I mean our metaphysical lies, is in diapers, but our scientific knowledge is a giant
...
and weak, pathetic mankind is the one who bears the brunt of this atrocious imbalance
...
. So here he's supposed to know everything, but in another way he knows nothing. In my scheme the big thing will be fine metaphysical lies, a god you can know and feel—and all this data about mere objects, which can't give us happiness, will be only a means to our goal: total control. And let's not argue that point, any idiot can see it's true. By now man has invented practically everything, only he hasn't found any form of government better than Christ's or the Buddha's teachings. No. Of course, I don't deny you're entitled to be skeptical, but that's a luxury only our elite can be entitled to
...
. For the rabble we'll serve up happiness à la carte and just see how they'll eat it up."

"You think any of that could happen?"

The Astrologer froze for a moment. Then he twisted the steel ring with the violet stone, took it off his finger and peered inside it; then, advancing on Barsut, but with a faraway look, as if his mind had left reality, he answered:

"Yes, anything the mind can picture can eventually come true. Didn't Mussolini impose religious schooling in Italy? That's my idea of hitting people over the head and then getting them in line. The thing is to grab hold of a whole generation
...
. The rest is easy."

"And your grand scheme?"

"Now we get to it. My plan is to set up a secret society, not just to spread my ideas but to train the future kings of mankind. I know what you're going to say, that there've been lots of secret societies—true enough—they've all failed because they were based on nothing solid, depended on some vague emotional or religious or political ideas, never anything real and concrete. But our setup will be based on a more solid modern concept: industrialism, that is, our formula will be one part fantasy, if that's what you'd call what I've been talking about, and one part reality: industry, which brings in gold."